A Study of Mail from Ice Islands; featuring
T-3

Fletcher's Ice Island, Drift
Station Bravo, et al.

Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher was the Commanding
Officer of a U.S. Air Force weather "Ptarmigan" squadron stationed in the Arctic right
after WW II. In 1946, a large tabular iceberg was discovered, which was
basically a large chunk that had broken off the Arctic ice shelf (Ellesmere
Island Ice Shelf, to be precise) and had gone
adrift, often locking in the ice pack. This "ice island" was
codenamed T-1, taken from its original radar designation as a target. Subsequently,
during further weather reconnaissance flights of the "Ptarmigan"
squadron, there was yet another ice island
spotted which was designated as Ice Island T-2.

Fletcher's Ice Island T-3 (the
official designation) was a very large ice chunk,
being a large fresh-water segment of a former glacier, that was seven miles in
length and
riding about fifty feet higher than the surrounding icepack. It was easily
large enough to land a plane on. T-3 had once been reported to have first been
identified during World War II, and there are conflicting reports as to when it
was actually "discovered". It is felt that one such ice island
had, almost fifty years earlier, deceived
polar explorer Robert Peary, leading to the placement of "Crocker Land"
on the map. At least one polar party counted on finding land where the map
showed Crocker Land to be, and perished as a result.

On March 19, 1952, the U.S. Air Force led by
Colonel Fletcher and some scientists landed on this ice
island in a C-47 aircraft, setting up a weather observation station. Fletcher established a research station
that was manned at this big ice sheet for roughly the next 25 years,
despite a grim quote given by the head of the Alaska Air Command at the time, a
General Old, who was quoted in a Life magazine article of the time as saying
"I don't
see how any man can live on this thing."

As you will see, he
was a bit premature with that comment. In May 1953, under sponsorship of the
National Geographic Society, Colonel Fletcher and another scientific team made the first-ever
landing at the
North Pole. Philatelically documented flight covers do exist of that
event and are extremely
valuable and rare; very seldom if ever seen in auctions.

Fletcher's Ice Island, and the research station
that was located on it, rotated in circles in the
Arctic Ocean, floating aimlessly along in the Arctic currents in a
clockwise direction.

The station was inhabited mainly by scientists along with a few military
crewmen and was resupplied during its existence primarily by military planes
operating from Barrow,
Alaska.

The first occupation of T-3 was from March
1952 to May 1954, and the second occupation was from April to September of
1955. It was reoccupied in 1957. The station operated under (at least?) three names over
the years; through the first two occupations it was known and designated
as "T-3" and later as "Fletcher's Ice Island T-3",
but with the third occupation, it was at that time designated as
"Bravo".

During the period of active habitation, T-3 covers were serviced, each stamped with a
variety of hand-stamped cachets and markings, dated, and often marked with
a manuscript notation of the
geographic position of the
drifting station on that particular day of ops. The T-3/Bravo
covers were often cancelled
at Barrow or at a USAF base
in Alaska, and then placed in the mailstream. Covers exist
with both Drifting Ice Station Bravo and Ice Island T-3 markings on the
same cover, which leads to confusion on the part of novice collectors. As
a general rule of thumb, the floating chunk of ice was called by
its designator T-3; the research camp that was built upon that
ice island was called Drift Station Bravo. Covers are also known bearing the cachet "Operation
Ice Skate"; see my separate page (link given below) with information about
that United States Air Force project.

The latest occupation date I could find in my
research about T-3 was when when a
Twin Otter aircraft from the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL) landed there on April
2, 1979. At that time T-3 was located at 72º 32' W, 133º 12' W, which
placed it about 400 nautical miles from Barrow, Alaska, (per NARL news of April
1979.) At that time, they noted that T-3 was "reactivated", but
not yet "reoccupied." My history of T-3 then goes dry for
a few years...

As a curious finale to the history of this
chunk of ice, T-3 was actually "misplaced" for a time... in a science
report headlined "Researchers find missing ice island" from the
Associated Press, datelined Washington, D.C. of July 3, 1983, it was
noted that government scientists had rediscovered T-3 after it had been missing
for six months.

Their discovery came apparently just in time
for them to witness the melting of the relatively small ice block of fresh water
ice floating in the Arctic, according to the NOAA. The 7-mile by 3-mile
island was spotted near the North Pole by researchers studying the haze
that forms over the Arctic during the spring and summer. (I happened to be able
to philatelically "document" those particular NOAA flights by Pilot
Dave Turner; see my AGASP page
for further information.) The article also noted that when T-3 was finally
abandoned after being used for a quarter century, Fletcher's son, Joseph
Fletcher, Jr., had been a member of the party closing the facility.

Fletcher senior, who retired in 1983 from
NOAA, said that he thought the island would not last much longer. Fletcher
predicted that in the next few months (after that story was reported in 1983)
that T-3 would drift out of the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic, where it
would melt. Before the era of satellites, the research station
on T-3 had been a valuable site for measurements of the atmosphere in the
Arctic. Satellites had been used to keep watch on the island since it was
abandoned, but meteorologists had lost track of T-3 in the fall of 1982, which
prompted them to make a request to the NOAA flight research team conducting the
ozone experiments to keep an eye out for T-3. NOAA pilot Dave
Turner, who was most assuredly one of the last persons who saw T-3, related that
the island was found about 150 miles from the North Pole, locked in the pack
ice. T-3 was easy for the pilots to spot as its surface was distinctly
different from the surrounding ice because structures, oil drums and the remains
of a C-47 aircraft wrecked years ago were still visible. Dr. Fletcher
reported to the AP that the kidney-shaped island had broke off from the
Ellesmere Island ice shelf many years earlier, and was much stronger than the
surrounding salt-water ice pack, but that nonetheless, T-3 was at that time
about one-third of its original 160-foot thickness.
We can only surmise that sometime after July of 1983, T-3 subsequently worked its way to the outside edge
of the Arctic ice pack; where it caught a
current to the south, drifting off into oblivion in the Atlantic
Ocean, eventually melting away.

T-3's weather shack and the
primitive conditions of an ice camp circa 1957, was quite realistically depicted in the Artcraft cachet
for the United Nations Meteorological stamp.

Go
here to see the earliest example of a Drift Station Bravo cover I
have in my collection, signed by the Commanding Officer, Marshall
G. Gassenmiller, Lt. Col, USAF, Commander, Drift Station BRAVO.

Reports of earlier usage of the Drift Station Bravo cachet are
appreciated.

Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (AIDJEX)

According to the documentation on the
first cover illustrated, AIDJEX was established in 1972, and there were a
series of continuing ice stations for subsequent years, all retaining the name
of AIDJEX. For clarity, references to specific research years are
sometimes seen notated such as: AIDJEX '72, AIDJEX '73, and so on.

The above envelope bears the writing
of Rolf Bjornert, who was the Field Operations
Manager for the AIDJEX project from 1971 to 1976.
Rolf was kind enough to give me permission to publish
several photographs from the project. Note that
this cover bears a cachet that is identical to the
official patch of the project. The following patch
was designed by Eddy Carmack, who at that time
was affiliated with faculty of the Oceanography
Department of University of Washington.

Rolf noted that he operated from AIDJEX
as WA7LAB
and that he often ran phone patches for
the scientists involved in the project.
Otherwise, they did a lot of operations
on the 20 meter band. In the following
picture, he is showing operating from
the radio shack at AIDJEX.

This is the official 1975-76 patch for
the AIDJEX Beaufort Sea Project, courtesy of R. Bjornert.

The 1975 AIDJEX project was a 14-month
experiment which studied air-sea-ice interaction out on the pack-ice north of
Barrow, Alaska. It was officially established at 76º 20' N / 140º 50'
W on March 13, 1975. Rolf included this photograph of supply delivery to
AIDJEX.

AIDJEX Main
Camp in the Spring of 1975,
showing an Alaska International
Airways C 130 Hercules and a USN
R4-D (in civilian terms called
DC-3) which were used to deliver
camp equipment, scientific gear
and fuel to last for the coming
summer.

A report from Canadian sources
dated 10-24-1975 stated that the main AIDJEX ice camp, "Big Bear"
was breaking up under deteriorating ice conditions, with one ice break being
directly underneath one of the buildings. Photographs showed the
building actually straddling an ice crack--not a good place to be!
Personnel and equipment had to be evacuated to the satellite stations of Blue
Fox, Caribou, and Snow Bird, all of which were within a
roughly 60 mile radius of the original ice camp.

Rolf notes that in
October of 1975 the Main Camp broke up, followed by safe
evacuation of all scientists, and immediately an onset
of dismantling the entire camp and moving it some 40 nm
to a new site. "That move was accomplished by a small
group of dedicated logistics personnel, a DeHavilland
Twin Otter on skis, and a Bell 205 helicopter. The big
aircraft could no longer be used as we had lost the main
runway during the ice breakup. We were fortunate, not
loosing any lives, nor did the science program suffer
more than a short interruption during the re-location.
The experiment lasted until May of 1976 as originally
planned."